


The Paroled God

by Terramyths



Category: American Folklore, Greek and Roman Mythology, Hellenistic Religion & Lore, Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies)
Genre: (only in the first chapter though), 20th Century setting, Additional Warnings Apply, All mythological gods know each other, All the Gods are complicated, Attempt at Humor, Cynicism, Gen, Humor, I swear I read the myths before writing this, Mental Illness, Norse Mythology Au- Loki doesn't cause Ragnarok, Poison, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-04 01:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12760203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terramyths/pseuds/Terramyths
Summary: A thousand years ago, Odin sentenced Loki for the crime of killing Balder. Now it's 1918 and Loki's out on parole, trying to stay out of trouble on Earth.Or, Fate is Utter Bullshit and no one can predict the future.





	1. Freedom

**The thing about never-ending torture is that it gets rather monotonous.** A thousand years of poison dripping on my chest is rather painful and all, but it does lose some effect after a while if they don’t change up the poison occasionally. And for the first three hundred years, Odin would stop by, upping the dosage or switching to a different venom. But the poison has been the same for the last seven hundred. Perhaps this is the highest they could go, the most they could inflict on me. But I’ve long since been numb to the pain, dead to the world.

Sigyn left at the 200-year mark. Not that I can blame her now. Sure, for a while she was on the list of names I would curse out, but I understand how she was an innocent dragged into Odin’s quest to break me. Just like our beloved sons. Wherever she is, I do hope she’s happy.

I expected to be here for eternity.

Instead, at about the thousand year mark I rose from a state of hibernation I had gone into. Someone had just taken an axe to the binds made from my poor sons. Immediately I collapsed into the ground, groaning.

“You’re free,” they said. I don’t know who, I hadn’t heard a voice since Sigyn. My leg twitched, and slowly I rolled away from the poison. When I looked up, my liberator was gone.

I slept for another week after that. I think. Perhaps a week, perhaps a year, I don’t know. When my eyes finally cracked open, I felt numb to pain, to emotion. You could slice me in half I and it wouldn’t hurt. The first ten years of poison I couldn’t think straight, but soon after my mind turned to thoughts of revenge and escape, of justice for my sons to burning the whole universe to the ground. Over time, those thoughts slowly turned into incoherent ramblings and then nothing.

I was in a cave).  I could see the light coming from the opening, so I crawled over to it, trying to regain movement in my limbs. When I finally stepped outside, I looked back. The cave I had left was gone, replaced by a desert of ice. The sun was setting, the stars twinkling in the sky and mocking me. I didn’t recognize them. I doubted I was on Jotunheim, so I must have been in Midgard’s Southern Hemisphere.  Fine. if the stars are useless I’ll just walk and hope for the best.

“Siygn!” I shouted, “Sigyn! Sigyn!”  each time sounding more desperate. I was still on the ground, my back to the ice. Groaning, I pushed myself off the ice, forcing my body to cooperate. It was colder than Death itself, the icy air freezing my lungs. My liberator, whoever the fuck they were, did not leave food or shelter or wood for a fire.

Maybe this was a new stage of torture.

I kept shouting, going through the list of Norse Gods I could remember until my throat was hoarse. “Thor! Odin! Frigga! Freya! Frey!”  I repeated the list, reducing my Silver-tongue to a whisper.  Still nothing. Maybe they had forgotten about me. Maybe they could only remember my sins, and reduced to a villain in their memory.

Maybe I’ll have better luck with other Panthenons. But I had few friends among the other legends.  Hermes might be willing to help, but I was well out of his travel routes. But the thought of the Greek made me remember another figure. Prom-something. Another chained god, surely he would be empathetic enough to help.

But I couldn’t remember his name.

“Promitus? Pomegranate? Promy? Prometheus?” The last one sounded about so I kept shouting.

“Hello? Ciao?” I would later learn he was speaking Italian, but the words fell on unfamiliar ears.

“Help!” I rasped in Latin. He stepped towards me, sizing me up with dark eyes. As a half-giant, I always considered myself tall for a god, but he still had a solid five inches over me. I wondered if I shrunk during my imprisonment.

“The Trickster?”

“Yes. Loki Laufeyson. I’m free.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starts right where chapter 1 ends.

Prometheus snapped his fingers, and for a millisecond the air _whooshed_ around us before we appeared in his home.

“Sit down,” he said, gesturing to a seat at his table. He snapped his fingers, and a clay mug of tea appeared. Another snap and a translation spell glowed above my head. “Antarctica, eh? I thought they would have left you a touch closer to their realm, perhaps Canada.”

“I didn’t recognize the stars,” I admitted.

“So you would be stuck there. Shit, you’re lucky I found you.”

“A toast to that,” I said, lifting the tea up, downing the mug in a gulp. He snorted and continued talking.

“But, I will have to say warn you, it’s unlikely that you are truly free. Let’s call it Parole. I advise you to stay away from the gods and keep your head down. And I imagine catching the two of us together would instantly leave us back in chains. I wish this weren’t the case, but paranoia beats hospitality,” he gave me a shrug and a “what can you do?” smile. “For now, wash up.”

I suppose I stunk to high heaven. I snapped my fingers, expecting the dirt on my body to clear away instantly. No luck, I was still filthy. I frowned and concentrated on the grime of my fingers, trying to reach the magic that wasn’t there. Still, I tried again, not even removing a speck.

Prometheus just stared, his hands drumming on the table. “This, this is highly unusual.”

Perhaps I should explain how magic works for most beings. Magic is a form of energy, controllable by those who can generate it. Technically, all living beings can generate minuscule amounts, but Gods are the equivalent of a power plant. The most powerful Gods (Zeus and his brothers, Horus and Set, Odin and Thor and once… me) are an entire damn electrical grid. The magical power gets stored in our bodies or weapons, like a battery. Problem is since my body had taken damage, so did my ability to use magic. I had used up all my reserves protecting myself from the poison, and then the poison damaged my ability to generate and store magic.

Still, guessing from the fact I wasn’t dead yet, I could still generate just enough magic to keep myself immortal. Still, I wasn’t sure to what extent. Gods are true immortals; we set ourselves to whichever age we like, only magical weapons can hurt us, and we cannot die. Even the Norse Gods, who are all fated to die in Ragnarök, fall into this category.

“The poison,” I said simply, and his eyes widened. _This is bad; this is very very bad…_ I was once considered a very powerful god at the time of my imprisonment. Against a less powerful immortal like Prometheus…

“We can discuss this more tomorrow,” he said a touch quicker than before. He paused and took a breath. “I have a private bath you can use. I’ll explain modern fashion later-”, he snapped his fingers and a tunic, pants, and belt appeared, “but for now wear this.” I was still wearing only a loincloth. He helped me over to the bathroom, my legs still very feeble.

It was a small room, clearly intended for one person. There was a large Victorian claw-foot bathtub in the center of the tiled room. There were some similarities between this and the old Roman baths, enough that the room didn’t feel completely alien. Prometheus bent over, gesturing to the two knobs above the bath. “Turn the left knob for cold water, right for hot. Use the soap and brush to clean yourself. This is a towel, use it to dry yourself off,” He then moved over to a ceramic seat. “This is a toilet. Your waste goes in here, use the paper next to it to wipe up. Across from it is the sink, handles are the same as the toilet. Use it to shave and wash your hands.” After setting a razor on the sink he left, shutting the door behind him.

Gingerly I stepped into the tub, careful not to slip from the slick surface and turned on the hot water. Hot water was not an oddity to me as you might expect, thermal baths existed long ago. Still, the pressure was a bit of a surprise, and it took less time than expected for the water to reach my shoulders.

There was some level of absurdity in taking a bath. I once thought my first act as a free god would be taking revenge, not trying to scrub the dirt out of my fingernails. Though I do suppose I could save the water and then dump it on Thor’s stupid head. A rather shitty plan, but it would work.

I tried cleaning my hair as best I could, but I clearly needed a good shave. From Prometheus’s appearance, it appeared men wore their hair short anyway. When the water grew cold, I stepped out, gingerly wrapping the towel around myself, walking over to the sink.

I gazed at the mirror, not quite recognizing myself. I could see wrinkles around my green eyes. My hair was fiery red, clumped up and well past my shoulders, and the grey streaks were an unwelcome sight. A scar cut across my lip, leaving a small notch. It was an uncomfortable reminder of my past mistakes; another warning to stay away from the gods. The beard may not have grown on the scarred skin, but I could use a mustache to hide it.

I say this as a shapeshifter, but I generally looked leaner than the other gods. Now I was severely underweight. The imprisonment left me drained, physically and emotionally.

I forced myself to look away, putting on the tunic and pants before heading back to the kitchen. My stomach rumbled at the thought of food. Unfortunately, instead of a feast at the table, there was a blond stranger. He wore a white coat and sat next to a large black bag. Still, the golden hair looked familiar, and from a distance he resembled Apollo. “Loki, this is Asclepius, the Greek god of Medicine,” Another mouthful of a name. “He’s agreed to evaluate your health, see if we can restore you to your, ah, true potential.” Asclepius’s expression suggested otherwise.

“The first thing I’m going to do is draw some of your blood for testing,” he said holding up a needle and vial. This is to see if the poison is still in your system, and to see if it has had any other effects.”

“Plus, no golden blood, no true immortality” I concluded. 

“Hold out your arm,“ he instructed, before tying a rubber cord around it. After a minute, he withdrew the needle, leaving me a touch light-headed. As a god, my blood had a golden color to it. Now it was bronze. Prometheus looked surprised at this. Evidently, the eagles hadn’t had this effect on him.

Asclepius still held the same grumpy expression. “Not human, but based on the color I’ll guess resurrecting immortal,” he stopped, hesitating and unsure of himself. “I don’t know how long it will take for you to recover from this if that’s even possible.”

 _Great, just bloody fantastic._ Prometheus was still stone silent. After all, I had taken his title as Most-Tortured-Immortal. Asclepius continued his examination, my weight is his most pressing concern. When he finished, he snapped his fingers and every tool he used shot back into his bag.

Prometheus kept drumming his fingers on the table. Great, this was making the Titan of Forethought nervous. “There is another reason I called Asclepius over. It’s a theory I’ve formed, and your blood test may have confirmed it.”

Asclepius hesitated again as if I was being handed a death sentence. “My father, Apollo, has the gift of prophecy, same as Odin. But when he looks out into the future, he sees the probabilities of each possible timeline. This is reliable with natural disasters, but he is never 100% certain about the future. The more distance the future, the less accurate the prophecy. I think when they imprisoned you, Ragnarok was too high of a possibility. But now you’re free.” He meant that the probability that I would cause the apocalypse is now basically zero. And the probability that I would recover, and become a god once again? Also, damn near zero. “This isn’t to say the Norse Gods will let you rejoin them. And I cannot emphasize this enough, _Stay away. No pranks, no revenge, no contact of any kind._ If they find out you’re a resurrecting immortal, they will kill you and make sure you stay dead.”

I pursed my lips. “So, what the fuck do I do?”

“Are there any being from other Pantheons that owe you favors?” Prometheus asked.

“Hermes,” I said, remembering. Asclepius scowled. “What?”

“He’s constantly stealing from me!” Asclepius said indignantly. I snorted, remembering that Asclepius was a younger god, only three thousand or so.

Prometheus coughed. “Kid," cue a glare from the doctor, "he steals from everybody. Besides, it’s not like Loki has anything valuable at the moment. I’ll contact him tomorrow. But there’s one more thing I need you to do,” he said, holding up a lock of my hair. Asclepius sighed and reached into his bag again.

Another hour was spent trying to cut my hair down to a short wave and shaving my beard down to a goatee and mustache. Perhaps I looked a tad evil, but it was a step up from cabin-dwelling maniac. “Most men wear hats outdoors, so use a fedora to hide the red hair,” Asclepius said, and with a snap of his fingers, the room was clean.

“Thank you, I am beyond grateful for your help,” Asclepius’s eyes widened a bit with surprise (Gods usually don’t thank one another) but shook my hand. In a flash of light, he was gone, leaving behind a couple of bottles of medicine. Prometheus moved the bottles to a counter and snapped his fingers.

 _Finally_ , a feast. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writers notes: Okay, so I turned something that should be a single chapter into three. Wonderful.  
>  Historical accuracy: As I said in the description, this is set right after WWI, so Loki’s dealing with modern plumbing. I doubled checked and the modern bathroom set up would have existed.   
> Mythological accuracy: Loki did not have a cleft lip in the myths, but at one point he had his lips sewn up after losing a bet with some dwarfs. The scar is a reference to that incident. On a personal note, I was born with a clef lip, and this seemed like a good excuse to give a character a similar scar.

**Author's Note:**

> Would a 1000 year old god talk like this? Eh, probably not. If it bugs you, pretend he dictated this to a younger character and they wrote all of this down.  
> This is not your usual Loki. This is a Loki psychologically broken after a thousand years. I don’t think he’s morally a better person now, but he’s not going to be up to usual antics either. At some point, he went to wanting the universe up in smoke to now just wanting to see his kids again. I’m basing him off of the original myths, though Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology is my main source of inspiration.  
> Also, I swear I can be funny and sarcastic just give me a few chapters.  
> One last note, If I need to raise the warning tell me.


End file.
